ARTICLES ABOUT BROADBAND WIRELESS ACCESS BY DATE - PAGE 3

NEW DELHI: The telecom department has proposed six options to compute spectrum usage charge (SUC) — including a flat fee suggestion of the sector regulator — to an inter-ministerial panel which will take a final decision on January 2. New Delhi is desperate to try and resolve the contentious issue which has put the upcoming bandwidth auctions under a cloud. Currently, operators pay between 3 per cent and 8 per cent of their annual revenue to the government as SUC, depending on the quantum of airwaves held.

NEW DELHI: Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJIL), the telecom arm of Reliance Industries , today said it has received a unified telecom licence that will enable it to offer voice telephony and high speed data services across the country. The Unified Licence for all 22 Service Areas across India will make the company the first telecom operator in the country to get pan India Unified Licence, the company said in a statement. "The Unified Licence would allow RJIL to offer all telecom services including voice telephony under a single licence," the statement said.

NEW DELHI: Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Jio's application for unified licence and asked the company to deposit Rs 1,673 crore as entry fee, according to documents reviewed by ET. The unified licence (UL) will allow Reliance Jio , which has been an internet service provider, to offer voice services as well. Reliance, through its acquisition of Infotel Broadband in 2010, holds a pan India block of 20 MHz spectrum in the 2.3 GHz band, popularly known as the 4G band. The company is currently testing voice over LTE technology in this band.

NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel's plan to fully own the India broadband unit of Qualcomm may be in trouble with the telecom department trying to ascertain if the proposed change in equity violates rules laid down for the auctions in which the US chipmaker won bandwidth to offer high speed internet services. The controversy has erupted after Bharti Airtel, India's largest telecom operator, intimated to the government that it had recently upped its stake in Wireless Business Service to 93.45% from 51%. The balance 6.55% is still with Qualcomm, and Bharti Airtel has said it intends to increase its stake to 100% by November 2014.

NEW DELHI: Shares of public sector telecom operator, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) which have been in an uptrend so far in the month of September rallied another 5% in trade on Friday, a day after the GoM decided to refund an amount paid in 2010. The Group of Ministers (GoM), headed by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram , on Thursday, decided to refund over Rs 11,000 crore to BSNL and MTNL, the two state-run players, for returning broadband wireless access (BWA)

NEW DELHI: Reliance Jio Infocomm, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries , and a few other players have applied for Unified Licence, Department of Telecom Secretary M F Farooqui said today. "Reliance Jio has applied for Unified Licence," Farooqui said on the sidelines of C-Dot Foundation Day function here. Asked if the Department has received applications from other players, Farooqui said: "Yes, there are a few others who have applied. " The names of the players, however, could not be ascertained.

NEW DELHI: Expanding the footprint of its high-speed Internet services, Bharti Airtel is likely to launch by September fourth generation (4G) services in Delhi, which is one of the lucrative data market in the country. The firm, which already offers 4G services in Kolkata , Bangalore, Pune and Chandigarh, has roped in Chinese equipment maker Huawei to build and operate the 4G network in Delhi. "We are planning to launch 4G services in Delhi by September and has selected Huawei for the network," a company source said.

NEW DELHI: The Department of Telecom (DoT) is likely to ask broadband wireless access (BWA) operators, which got spectrum two years ago, to speed up deployment of network and also inform the government about the technology they are using for rolling out services. At present, only Bharti Airtel has launched its BWA services in Kolkata and Bangalore while the remaining players are yet to firm up their plans about the roll-out of services. "It is proposed to write to all BWA operators for early deployment of network for services and to intimate this ministry about the technology to be used by them," a source in DoT said.

NEW DELHI: Revenue from non-voice and data services in India is expected to increase more than 400 per cent to $19.3 billion by 2020, from $3.9 billion at present, but voice revenues will decline during the same period to $31.5 billion from $34.7 billion currently, Huawei said in a report on Wednesday. The government's move to create a countrywide broadband network that offers affordable broadband to all would propel the total number of internet users to 563 million by 2020, of which number of wireless data users will be 450 million while the remaining will be fixedline users.

NEW DELHI: US-based chip-maker Qualcomm has approached sectoral tribunal Qualcomm against the government reducing the validity of BWA spectrum alloted to the company to 18 years and six months from 20 years. The company has also challenged the reduction in the roll-out obligation period from five years to three-and-a-half years. A TDSAT bench headed by its Chairman Justice S B Sinha has asked government to file reply within four weeks. Qualcomm had won the broadband wireless access (BWA)